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Children As Bombs

Anti-individualism taught to an extreme.

(Page 2 of 2)

What the aforementioned young people could use is some major deprogramming. For starters, the suicide-promoting poetry in their curriculum could be replaced with some Ayn Rand, the perfect antidote for self-immolation.

In For the New Intellectual, Rand warns against "death-worshipping mystics" who control and humiliate through the use of guilt and fear, preaching that a man's pursuit of happiness here on earth is evidence of depravity and selfishness, that his independent mind is a source of arrogance, his body a source of evil, that his liberty, self-esteem and individuality are desecrations of the commandments for obedience, humility, suffering, renunciation and self-sacrifice.

"There is no way to make a human being accept the role of a sacrificial animal," writes Rand, "except by destroying his self-esteem."

Page:   12

topics:
Education, Islam, Books, Military, Israel

About the Author

Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise and an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.

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